Hellraiser: Judgment 4K 2018 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Detectives Sean and David Carter investigate a case of gruesome serial murders. Joining forces with another detective, they follow the killer further and further into a labyrinth of horror that has no place in the world of the living. The deeper they spiral down into the underworld, the more they realize they've taken the wrong bait. It seems the Cenobites aren't waiting for the maniac's victims.

Review 4K Movie

It's an interesting situation with this franchise. Dimension Films still owns the rights to Pinhead and Co., but every 6-7 years they have to report to the audience that Pinhead is here, he hasn't gone anywhere, and he's alive and well. But when you look back and realize that the whole series is already more than 30 years old! Let's just remember how it was: the first two movies are considered canon, and if you say something bad about them, Pinhead himself will come to you at night and punish you. And rightly so - the movies deserve it. The third and fourth parts were producer's experiments - somewhere successful, somewhere not at all, but after that it was decided to send the overplayed guests from hell to videocassettes and dvd-discs. The fifth part climbed into mystery detective territory, from this series Pinhead and company are no longer the basis of the plot. From the sixth to the eighth, Rick Botha simply made movies from ready-made scripts, to which Mr. Pinhead was added on his knee in the last five minutes. And just like that, the ninth installment was a kind of seven-year report that, frankly, looks like.... really bad. Another seven years have passed, and this is it.

So here we have Gary J. Tunnicliffe's mystical horror 'Hellraiser: The Verdict'. Mr. Tunnicliffe is a veteran of the Pinhead series. He was the one who signed on back in the third installment to be responsible for the visuals, and has remained there ever since. He even wrote the script for 'Revelations' when there was no one else to do it. Well, we won't beat him up for that, because he really found a shitload of great visual solutions even for the video sequels. And what's up with 'Revelations' only Garcia knows.

The movie begins with a 12-minute prologue that is either the best or worst part of the movie. There will be no one left indifferent to what is happening on screen. The thing is that we are rather stylishly shown a homeless man who receives a note with an invitation to come to a certain hut on the outskirts of the city, where all his problems will be solved. There he is tied to a chair and the trial begins, at the end of which a verdict will be passed. First his words are recorded in detail. Then John Gulager, who has nowhere else to go after 'Piranha 3DD', comes in and starts eating paper and throwing it up. Prepare to watch the case in detail, because if the phrase 'what is natural is not ugly' is not for you, then wait, soon the soap opera for a whole hour will begin.

And so yes - the prologue ends, the credits roll and the plot begins. Two cop brothers, investigation, murders, a suspect with a big name Mentor - something like that was already in the part about the Engineer, right? But as for me - here everything is played much more boring. Heroes will wander around and talk endlessly. Replicas sometimes give such idiocy that you begin to realize that the script was written by the author of the ninth part. Remember the scene with the dog at least - marasmus in cube. Unfortunately, the main enemy of this movie is boredom. Let's do the math - the prologue is 12 minutes long, 3 more minutes of opening credits. There is an hour left for the main plot, and during this hour you can really get bored.

But let's not talk much about bad things this time. The movie is saved by really successful visual solutions. Let's remember who the director of the movie worked for a bunch of years and get an extremely proper spending of $500,000. Everything looks very cheap, but extremely grungy. A bloody broken hut, great makeup, and well-crafted visuals are exactly what this movie boasts. If I was getting bored with the trivial investigation of cops, I understood that soon I will be shown the 'dark side' of this movie and it will be cool.

Overall, even in terms of editing (not in terms of plot, per se), the movie reminds me of some middle parts of 'Saw'. There's an investigation in a clipped manner, which abruptly switches to a torture chamber (in this case, a 'court hearing') and over-the-top pathos music. At the end we are again given a final twist, but it's no longer as interesting to watch the same thing from different angles for the sixth time in a row.

In general, the movie turned out to be contradictory. It's too different from the other parts. It's not 'Hellraiser' at all. Pinhead is not Doug Bradley, so that's it, it's definitely not 'Hellraiser' (although Pinhead looks really adequate here, whereas in 'Revelations' I couldn't watch it without laughing). The visuals here are very cool, beautifully shot and made. However, a silly and tedious script in which Pinhead is once again superfluous. Seriously - finish the investigation to make it more interesting to watch, remove Pinhead, because he's useless here. And it'll be a great movie. A really cool movie. It's a very unusual movie. But it fell short, unfortunately. Okay, we'll wait another seven years. Thanks for not being a comedy like the ninth movie.